A Brief History of Wade’s NatWest Pigs

29th February 2016

Let’s travel back in time to the NatWest Pigs; Wade were not the sole contributors to the collection, but it was those productions by Wade in Stoke-on-Trent which had been modelled by Alan Maslankowski which have become collectables.

Unfortunately, if you are the owner of a NatWest pig and there isn’t an incised ‘Wade England’ logo or even the back stamp of Wade on the base, it has not been made by Wade.

Rewinding back to the early 1980s when the promotion began, the NatWest Bank in the UK was looking to attract young people to save with them and came up with the idea of having a family of pigs become collectables. The first of the collectables was baby Woody, available for investors who opened an account with a minimum of £5. The remainder of the collection was given away for free.

After six months, if the account contained at least £25, they received Annabel and then, after one year, the account will have needed to have grown to £50 to qualify for Maxwell. At eighteen months, the account that contained £75 would receive Lady Hillary and then, after a further two years, if the account had grown to £100, people who managed to stay on course received Sir Nathaniel Westminster.

The offer ended in 1988 and altogether Wade produced over 5 million pigs, relatively few children were able to complete the entire set. Because of this, Sir Nathaniel Westminster wasn’t in great demand and fewer were produced. In present times, Sir Nathanial Westminster is now worth around £60 to £70.

Roughly ten years later, NatWest reached out to Wade to add another pig to the series collectables. Cousin Wesley was introduced by Ken Holmes as the sixth pig of the series, released in 1999 to promote a NatWest personal savings bond for children which required an investment of £1000. As there was an initial high investment that was needed, this promotion seemed to go almost unnoticed by both collectors and investors and many people are still unaware of Cousin Wesley’s existence even though Wade produced in excess of 5000 of them. Wesley is now highly sought after by collectors who recently became aware of his existence. He sells for between £200 and £250.

In 2011, Wade began a new piggy bank line with the introduction of Lady Margaret. A pink colourway of Lady Margaret had been sold in Stoke-on-Trent on 3rd April 2011. The last known pig created by Wade was in 2013 with the introduction of Wade Duke who dons a rather smart uniform.